2016 Kylie's Cuvée Sauvignon Blanc

The Wine
This wine has a beautiful pale straw color with bright yellow hues. Inviting scents of lime and lemon tree blossoms as well as passion fruit burst from the glass. The taste is lively and seductive, opening with notes of guava, white grapefruit, lemongrass, and cinnamon. The flavors then go wild on your taste buds. The smooth texture gives way to balanced acidity and the minerality inherent in the Goldridge soil. There’s a bit of effervescence at the tail end of this long finish that we love. Kylie’s Cuvée, is a family designation from our Sisters Collection, and named for Joe and Tracy Dutton’s middle daughter who, as a child, loved to swirl a wine glass calling out flavors and aromas she noticed to her parents. Her adventurous spirit and sparkling personality reflect the plethora of fruit, spice, and floral notes found in this wine.

The Winemaking
The Shop Block, Cohen, and Mrs. George Vineyards are night harvested on different days given their individual microclimates. The fruit from each vineyard is field sorted by hand and brought to the winery, where the fruit is whole-cluster pressed. 80% of this vintage is from Shop Block. The Shop Block fruit is racked off the sediment and placed into neutral French oak barrels and inoculated with cultured yeast. The barrels are then stored in our 55 degree cellar for 14 days. The wine is then racked from the lees and transferred back into French oak barrels for four months, at which time the Shop Block is prepared for stabilization and blending. The Cohen and Mrs. George Vineyard fruit, after whole cluster pressing, travels to stainless steel tanks, where it is inoculated with culture yeast, maintained and aged for four months before blending with the Shop Block Vineyard barrels prior to bottling.

The Vineyards
The two-acre lot of Shop Block Vineyard is located in the heart of the Green Valley and was planted to the Musqué clone in the late 1990’s. The Cohen Vineyard was planted in the early 1970’s and is one of the oldest Sauvignon Blanc vineyards we care for. It is located on a ridge top north of Occidental, on the far western edge of the Green Valley-Russian River Valley growing region. Mrs. George Vineyard, a stone’s throw away from the Home Ranch, brings out unique floral notes in its fruit. We selected these three vineyards from the more than 80 that Dutton Ranch farms for their consistently fabulous Musqué fruit; each are certified Sonoma
County Sustainably-Farmed and Fish-Friendly vineyards.